After days and days of testing I'm finally coming to a close.
I know there are some tests not yet completed: AF-reliability and VR-efficiency. But there are many reports claiming superior VR and reliable AF so I'm sure this lens will satisfy its owner also in these respects.

My conclusion:
The pluses: It has superior optics, very useful image-stabilization and is a joy to handle.
The minuses: image quality with tele-converters, build-in flash casts a shadow of the lens-hood between 70 and 105mm, price

To sum it up: This is the finest tele-zoom I ever tested and it will feature prominently on my camera. Highly recommended!

And here's a parting shot which you can scrutinize in full-resolution detail if you wish...

Locked:Standard-settings, no post-processing apart from a little cropping.

Last edited by Thomas on Mon Oct 24, 2011 8:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.

As an added bonus I have two shots to show the out-of-focus rendering of highlights with this lens at 200mm. The first image shot at f/2.8 and presented in full resolution (click through), the second at f/16 presented as two 100% crops mounted together.

f/2.8 full resolution:

f/16 100% crops:

While the rendering at f/16 shows some nasty "triple-doughnuts" the rendering at f/2.8 looks very pleasing with almost no outlining and nice round shapes. This is a clear indicator of pleasing and creamy bokeh at large apertures.

Last edited by Thomas on Sat Jan 02, 2010 10:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have an additional full-resolution shot in stark contra-light for you to have a look at the performance of the lens under adverse conditions. Shot at f/8, so any ghosts should be clearly visible. Pretty impressive methinks!

The jogger:

Last edited by Thomas on Sat Jan 02, 2010 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Here are two examples of the color-rendition of this lens under absolutely drab lighting. The sky was totally overcast and the clouds almost touched the place where I was shooting just half an hour after sunrise. Shot at -1 EV, developed at standard settings, no post-processing other than cropping and another -0.4 EV on the first image.

Two:195mm, f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/30 sec, hand-held

Bench:175mm, f/4.0, ISO 200, 1/60 sec, hand-held

You can click through to the large originals.

Last edited by Thomas on Sat Jan 02, 2010 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Coming back to the performance with close-up filter:
Did some more in depth testing with the Canon 500D. And although the test-target is not optimal for 1:2.4 magnification you can still see what's going on.
After testing at 200mm from f/2.8-f/11 I found that flatness of field was quite amazing but at f/2.8 I never got satisfying sharpness - even in the center. Only after stopping down to f/8 were the results "good enough".
The surprise came, when I reverse-mounted the close-up lens (a suggestion by Bjørn Rørslett)!
It was immediately clear from the f/2.8 live-view image that this was the sharper solution. The center-sharpness at f/2.8-reverse was as sharp as f/8-normal

See this 100% crop of the center shot at 200mm f/2.8 plus Canon 500D mounted in reverse orientation (left) and normally (right):
All focusing was done manually with Camera Control pro in live-view. Contrast based AF would have chosen a slightly more contrasty focus-position in normal mount but sharpness was reduced then.

But if you look at the corners field-curvature clearly showed now.

See this 100% cop of the DX-corner at 200mm f/2.8 plus Canon 500D mounted in reverse orientation (left) and normally (right):
The corners look better with the close-up lens normally mounted.

Stoping down you could still see differences between normal and reverse mount even at f/8.0 and only at f/16 both images were indiscernible. But that is on a DX-body. Not sure how the corners would look on a D3x.

So if you're shooting stamps you should use the Canon 500D in normal orientation and stop down to f/8.0 at least. But when shooting three-dimensional objects you should reverse-mount the 500D which gives you amazingly sharp shots even at f/2.8.

Last edited by Thomas on Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've just added some images from the Nuremberg zoo captured yesterday. They are all RAW-converted in Lightroom 3.5 with CA-removal ON (but geometry correction and anti-vignetting OFF) to the in-camera "vivid"-processings. This gives a slight increase of saturation, contrast and sharpening over the standard settings.
The images are mostly cropped but uploaded in full resolution so you can pixel-peep to your heart's content!
The lens was hand-held all the time with VRII set to ON in "normal" mode. Most of the shots were taken at the long end (I could have used a 300mm lens on the DX-body quite often) and some of the shots were taken at or below 1/125 sec.
The collection is here. Just ignore the fish: It was captured with the AF-S 35/1.4G.

One prime example of the capabilities of this lens is shown here:
Prairie Dog 31870 by Thomas, on Flickr
Shot at 200mm, f/2.8, 1/2000 sec, ISO 200